Purpose: To offer a practical, enjoyable, step-by-step approach to thoughtful, critical, and ultimately more efficient reading of the medical literature.

Content: The book comprises five sections and a comprehensive glossary. The first two sections on study design and diagnostic and screening tests provide a uniform framework with which to evaluate different types of studies and properties of tests. A brief section about rates of disease, including definitions and applications, follows. A section on decision and cost-effectiveness analyses provides a broad overview of these methods, including an introduction to decision trees, probabilities, costs, utilities, quality-adjusted life-years, and sensitivity analyses. The final section provides clear flow charts for deciding which statistical tests to perform depending on the type and number of variables evaluated.